The vitrine outside the Cafeteria in our John Prince’s Street site offers MA Fashion Curation and PhD curation students the opportunity to explore exhibition ideas in a physical space. It's a testing ground, where curators put theory into practice and experiment with creative solutions. It’s looked after by the Fashion Space Gallery in collaboration with the Centre for Fashion Curation. Naomi Zaragoza and Brodie Bastian have recently curated one of the latest displays under the title Desire, exploring the relations between fashion and fetishism.
"We were researching the definition of “fetishism” in psychoanalysis and we based our perspective on the concept's relation to the lack of something in a person’s life, like a romantic partner. In Latin culture it is common for a woman to place figures of Saint Antonio de Padua upside down as a way to pray for a potential partner into her life," Naomi explains. "We also were looking at nudism as a fetish, as in lacking clothing. Altogether, we wanted to display the nude harness on an upside down mannequin to represent these 'lacks'," she adds.
Brodie also mentions that in this installation religious fetishism plays with the idea of nudism as a principle of styling: "Nudism is the kind of fashion fetish that gives a nude and raw dimension to any garment. Using the colours of our skin and shapes that insinuate the structure of the body can support, reveal and transform nakedness. This leads to the suggestion of fantasy that the body goes through life naked and instantly becomes a sculptural object of devotion and superstition."
Desire - Curated by Naomi Zaragoza and Brodie Bastian.
Vegan leather harness by Bijoux Indiscrets.
Special thanks to Elsa Viegas from Bijoux Indiscrets, Isaac Uribe, Juliana Caviedes and the MA Fashion Curation 2018 cohort.
- Find out more about MA Fashion Curation
- Explore LCF postgraduate courses
- What’s on at LCF: open days and events
- More LCF Stories